Raila Odinga's lawyers and IEBC row over server access

Nasa and IEBC are engaged in a ping pong game over whether the court-ordered scrutiny of the commission’s ICT infrastructure has started.

On the one hand, Nasa lawyers are accusing IEBC of denying them access to the servers more than 24 hours after the Supreme Court ordered the scrutiny.

4.30AM

“At IEBC. We've been stonewalled. No read only access. They want to give already printed logs. It's back to court in the morning,” Nasa lawyer Paul Mwangi tweeted Tuesday morning.

The Nasa lawyers said that their agents, as well as those of Jubilee, stayed at IEBC until 4.30am on Tuesday as they waited to be granted the court-ordered access to no avail.

Instead of granting access, the opposition lawyers told the Nation that IEBC was instead giving them some computer logs they had downloaded about a week ago “which we rejected.”

At around 10.20am, Mr Mwangi again tweeted that scrutiny has not moved an inch.

“Just from IEBC. There is no one. Exercise was to continue this morning after stalemate yesterday at 4.30am. Now no access to meeting room,” Mr Mwangi said.

19 ITEMS

IEBC, on the other hand, claimed that it “has complied with orders as framed the Supreme Court. All parties in the petition are going on with the scrutiny” leaving the public at loss who between the commission and Nasa is to be believed.

“The commission has complied with orders as framed the Supreme Court. All parties in the petition are going on with the scrutiny,” IEBC also said on its official Twitter handle.

It is understood that the commission provided Nasa and the court officers soft copies of the logs on the server but Mr Odinga’s team made an additional request to download the logs themselves at about 1am Tuesday.

This meant that the commission had to get in touch with its partners Morpho/NTT to configure the remote access.

IEBC

This would take some time, said a source at the IEBC, and the commission would be fully willing to provide that access.

When the matter is brought up in the court, the question could hinge on what access to the server ought to mean.

The Supreme Court on Monday ordered that the opposition “be granted a read only access, which includes copying (if necessary) to” a list of 19 items that include IEBC servers, password policy and matrix, certified copies of certificates of penetration tests conducted on the IEBC Election Technology System prior to and during the 2017 General Election, and specific GPRS location of each KIEMS kit used during the presidential election for the period between and including August 5 and August 11, 2017.

FORMS

Nasa was also to access the log-in trail of users and equipment into the IEBC servers, log-in trails of users and equipment into the KIEMS database, administrative access log into the IEBC public portal between August 5, 2017 to date, certified photocopies of the original Forms 34A 34B and 34C, originals of the same forms and the scanned and transmitted copies of Forms 34A and B.

However, the deadline, according to Nasa, seems unlikely to be met and “we are going to raise this matter with the court this morning.”

Chief Justice David Maraga has said that the report of the scrutiny of the servers and the original forms should be submitted to the court at 5pm today.